Interactive Voice or Touch-tone Response (IVR) user interfaces have been a popular way of enabling callers to obtain computerized information from a database or to be directed to a department within a company without the assistance of a live operator. Many businesses incorporate these services to reduce costs. In spite of the many benefits of these types of services, there has been a continual resistance by callers to using these conventional systems and many callers are greatly frustrated by these IVR systems.
Conventional IVR services typically operate by having a recorded message that presents a list of choices or menus to the caller for call routing options and allows callers access to varying products and services. The caller uses the touch-tone keypad or voice inputs to enter or say the digit associated with the desired options and the service responds accordingly. Often, the options are arranged in hierarchical layers of menus. A caller is required to navigate these layers of menus to find the desired option. Many such services allow callers to “barge in” on the recorded message by making a response before the message is finished. However many callers, including first time or infrequent callers, do not know the available options or the option number or keyword associated with the correct option. These callers must listen to the entire message before a response can be made in order to make the best match between their request and the options available.
A common frustration experienced by callers concerns reaching the end of the menu message and not being able to recall the number(s) or option associated with the desired response. A caller attempting to navigate through a hierarchical menu may believe that an option is the desired choice, but he or she is not absolutely certain. The caller can try the response that is thought to be the correct one, but the consequences of this action are often unpleasant. The caller may be directed to the wrong party or the wrong branch of the menu structure and must somehow retrace his or her steps through the menus. Unfortunately, the caller may end up disconnecting and re-dialing the entire telephone number. In a popular attempt to solve this problem, conventional Interactive Voice Response user interfaces provide a menu option for the caller to have the full message menu repeated with each option in its entirety. This attempt is ineffective, because the caller is forced to listen to the entire menu again. This approach wastes the time of the caller and can lead to further dissatisfaction.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,016,336 to Hanson (hereinafter '336 patent) presents yet another possible solution. Under the '336 patent, the voice response system (VRS) learns individual caller behavior from prior visits to the VRS. The system stores the caller's unique identifier and a menu option selected by the caller in response to a menu manuscript. For subsequent calls by the caller to the system, the caller is presented with a menu manuscript based on the previous usage history that allows the caller to access the desired menu. Although this may reduce the number of menus a caller may have to navigate through, this method is less effective if the caller is a first-time caller to the system or if the caller wishes to deviate from his or her normal pattern of use.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20010014146 by William et al. presents an interactive voice response system, which stores the most frequently selected prompts of a caller who has previously visited the system. For subsequent calls by the caller to the system, the order of menu presentation is updated based on the previous frequency of use. The caller must call back to the system subsequent times for the menu to change. This system provides no accommodation for first-time callers for updating the presentation order. While this system may reduce overhead costs to businesses by not having to provide dedicated live operators, such a system may result in loss of time, increased customer frustration, and the possibility of lost customers for first-time callers.